Spinning Albino barb for months now!

[Wylgamez]

Hi, I have a 20g tall tank with 5 green tiger barbs, 2 albino barbs and a koolie loach. One albino barbs has been having buoyancy issues for more than a month now. It all began the day I found the tank at 82 degrees (versus 74) due to a faulty heater. This albino has its days where he spins and swim upside down for hours, then he acts normal. I have vary the diet with flakes, frozen shrimp brine, dried blood worms, and algae wafers. I feed them twice per day. I tried peas and cucumber but they never touched it. Well this fish seems very weak today, I feel his pain, he is getting stuck and hits everything. Any suggestions as what I should do?? The water levels are normal, although PH has been a bit high since last year at 7.8. I have live plants and a 30g/hour filter. Please help!! Thank you in advanced.

 

[Wylgamez]

My albino died, but the other one started to have the same behavior. This is obviously a sickness, can someone please advise treatment??

 

[Mcor]

My albino died, but the other one started to have the same behavior. This is obviously a sickness, can someone please advise treatment??

Do you feed tubifex worms? There is a parasite that they can carry which infects fish, causing them to spin and whirl and swim really crazily. It's called whirling disease. This is a fatal infection. Have a look for some videos on YouTube and let me know if what you find is what your fish are doing. If it looks like it could be whirling disease, you need to euthanise your infected fish.

 

[Wylgamez]

Thanks so much Mcor for the insights! funny that you mentioned it, I was doing some reading about parasites before reading this today. I don't feed them with tubifex, although I used to give them freeze dried blood worms. I significantly decreased the times I give them those since I read somewhere that they are bad for sick fish, not sure why. You can see what I feed them with in the image below. It's mainly tetra color tropical flakes and Hikari frozen brine shrimp, and I sometimes complement their diet with hikari algae wafers and omega one freeze dried blood worms. About the whirling disease, I watched a couple of videos like you suggested, and to be honest I'm not sure if that is what I see here, the albino that died did lots of twirling but always upside down, you could tell that it was trying to swim towards the food but had terrible buoyancy issues. I thought it could be a bladder issue or air in the belly... But your explanation sounds more logical to me. I have no idea what could trigger it but I'll try to make a video of the second albino who is having the same issues but not as often as his deceased sister. Btw, I've been doing 25% wc every other day because my green tiger barbs are stressed for some reason. The water conditions seem fine, although within a day, ammonia and nitrates levels increased a tiny bit. I'm soon replacing the carbon in the filter in case that is affecting the water quality.